Petits Fours

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog for a while, you know that I like all things miniature. Especially desserts. I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to make petits fours. They’re the perfect mini dessert; a tiny layer cake, dipped in poured fondant and individually decorated. Bite sized individual cakes? Yes, please. Who on earth could say no to these?

You can just dip a cube of cake into icing and call it a day (or rather a petit four), but the most traditional versions are layered with jam, soaked with liquor syrup, dipped in poured fondant and decorated. Pain in the ass? Yes. Worth it? Hell yes.

I iced my petits fours with poured fondant. There are two types of fondant, rolled and poured. Before I started researching for this, I only knew of rolled fondant, which is the really neat sugar-dough stuff that is often used to decorate wedding cakes. Poured fondant is similar to rolled, but instead of rolling it out to use it, you pour it while it’s in a liquified state. Makes sense to me. It’s easy to make, but it does require a candy thermometer. You need to boil sugar, corn syrup and water until the soft ball stage, but we’ll get to that later.

Once you have the cake and the fondant figured out, give yourself a break and buy a jam, any jam, for the filling. Sure, you can pick berries and make your own filling, but store-bought jam works beautifully in this and saves you a step or five. You can also soak the cake with a liquor syrup if desired. I never do this for my cakes, but if you want to, use a ration of 1:1:1 water, sugar, liquor. In a saucepan, dissolve sugar completely in the water. Remove from heat, add liquor, and allow to cool.

Now you’ll also need a few tools. A candy thermometer ($10 for a standard one, $30 for an electric one that has programs and alarms and such), a jelly roll pan (aka cookie sheet with sides), a food processor, a large serrated knife, parchment paper, a rolling pin, and a cooling rack.

Brush a Jelly Roll Pan (half sheet size, 12 x 17 x 1″) with oil. Use two sheets of parchment paper to cover the bottom, overlapping each long edge of the pan. This will allow you to lift the entire cake out of the pan without breaking it. The oil helps the parchment stick to the pan, so it doesn’t slip while pouring in the batter.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add Earth Balance, water, and lemon juice and beat well (with an electric mixer if available) for about a minute. Add the remaining ingredients and beat again. Pour the batter into the lined jelly roll pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the top is lightly browned, and the center springs back to your touch. Allow to cool in pan until just warm.

Gripping the parchment in the center on either side, gently lift the cake out of the pan and place it on a large cutting surface. It should look like this:

With a serrated knife, cut off all the caramelized edges (eat them!), and quarter the cake. Below is a photo of one of the four trimmed quarters:

Alright, here’s the first tricky part. With a large serrated knife, cut each quarter in half horizontally. You can take as much time as you need. Cut a little bit at a time, making sure your knife is being held level. Ideally you want two even layers.

Carefully separate the layers. You should now have this:

Spread the warmed jam on one of the sliced cake quarters. You don’t need a ton of jam, just enough to color the cake. You should still be able to see the cake through the jam.

Begin stacking, alternating cake and jam, until you have four layers of cake. You should have enough cake to make two stacks, each stack containing four layers of cake and three layers of jam. Trim the edges if needed.

Divide the marzipan in half. Knead it until it softens, then roll each chunk out separately using powdered sugar to prevent it from sticking.

Roll it out until you get a thin, even sheet that is larger in all directions than your layered cake.

Brush one side of the marzipan with water to make it sticky, then place it on top of your cake, sticky-side down. Trim the edges off with scissors. Repeat for the second rectangle of cake.

The cake is now ready to be refrigerated. It should be approximately 1 1/2 inches high. Cover it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight; this helps the jam set up and will help the cake stay together when you cut it into petit fours.

Now the cake has been refrigerated overnight!

Using a ruler, score the marzipan with 1 1/2 inch grid as a cutting guideline. Each rectangle of cake should have 15 full squares, and a little extra that you can cut off and eat. Here’s the scored, trimmed cake:

Keeping your knife as straight as possible, use long, sawing strokes to cut the cubes. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent the cake from drying out.

Written directions copy and pasted directly:Heat sugar, water and corn syrup to the soft-ball stage (238Â°F; 114Â°C). Pour into the food processor fitted with the steel blade. Wash the candy thermometer well and reinsert into the syrup. Let the syrup cool undisturbed in the workbowl to 140Â°F (60Â°C), about 30 minutes. Remove the thermometer.

Add any coloring or flavoring (vanilla, almond extract, etc.) and process 2 to 3 minutes, until the syrup completely converts from a glassy syrup to an opaque paste. When thoroughly cooled, store sealed at room temperature for 24 hours. Use or refrigerate for later use. [I just want to add: It will harden once completely cooled, simply microwave to liquify. It is warm enough to use for the petits fours immediately after processing.]

Place your petits fours on a cooling rack and pour your fondant into a small bowl. You’re ready to ice them!

In my opinion, icing is the hardest part. You need to keep your fondant warm and melty, and you’ll notice that it starts to set up fast. Give it a stir with a spoon before you dip each piece, as this will break any skin that has formed on top of the fondant. If it gets too thick (thinner is better), pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds and try again.

Start with the ugly ones, that way if you mess up on the first few you won’t be as sad. Hold each cube so your forefinger is on the top of the cake (touching the marzipan) and your thumb is on the bottom. Dip all four sides.

Place the dipped petit four on the rack. Use a spoon to ice the top.

Let the petits fours set. You may need the help of a sharp knife to remove them from the rack once the fondant is hardened. I drizzled some melted chocolate over them to decorate, but you can decorate them anyway you want. Piped buttercream, molded marzipan, whatever makes you happy.

143 comments

So I have been on a 4 YEAR SEARCH for a decent petits fours icing, and AT LAST I HAVE FOUND ONE!!! I can’t tell you how grateful I am! And I am in complete agreement with all who have mentioned how fantastic the instructions and photos are above. LITERALLY THE BEST PETITS FOURS INSTRUCTIONS ON THE WEB.

I would like to offer this little hint for easy icing (and preventing singeing fingertips): I got a long wooden skewer (very narrow, like for shishkabobs) and put the icing into a small bowl so that the icing was as near the top as possible. I speared the cubes from the bottom, and dipped them at a 45 degree angle (so the top was partially in the icing) and then spun the cube on the skewer. I then had a fork ready to rest the cake on and pulled the skewer downwards out of the cake through the tines of the fork. Then I used the skewer to help scoot the cake off the fork. You can’t imagine how quickly they were iced, and thanks to your magnificent recipe, they looked beautiful!

Wow.You have made beautiful Petit-fours.Your step by step instruction give me enough courage to want to try it out.You write beautifully and simply.Your decoration though simple looks gorgeous.all the best to you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ps i would love a marzipan recipe too.

They just aren’t petit fours unless you do all of the steps you included. Shortcuts or lack of layers makes them frosted cakes. You did an excellent job in your play by play commentary, but if there is any advice I would give is, have plenty of room (lots of room!), be prepared for a mess, and know that cursing will probably be involved! These are not easy or quick!

Wow! Beauiful pictures! So I used a different cake recipe but tried your icing recipe. Icing turned out fine but I had a hard time covering the cakes! I kept burning my fingers and the marzipan was melting and the icing wasn’t thinning out. Help! Any suggestions? It’s harder than it looks but the cake part is so good, I’m just eating it by itself! Thanks for the post, it’s great!

Sorry to bother you, I’m from Argentina and here we don’t have Earth Balance, can it be replaced with something?, or at least what is its? xD
Thanks for the recipe, it looks delicious and the size makes it even cuter (:

Your recipes are amazing with step by step pics and instructions. I heart vegan yum yum. I tried this one though and whew…it’s going to take some practice. After two attempts at the cake, I was able to piece together half of the recipe. The fondant turned to cement in my food processor! And, it was a challenge to apply it once reheated. Ack!

I have been looking for info about making petit fours in cookbooks and found very little info. Joy of Cooking almost tells you how. So this tutorial you have provided is just what I have been searching for. Thank you, thank you, thank you.